“The Faerie Queene” is another classic in which we find interesting allusions to horses, mostly the horses of romance.
One of the best known of these animals is Brigadore, called sometimes Brigliadore, which belonged to Sir Guyon, and was remarkable for a black mark in its mouth, in shape like a horseshoe.
Sir Guyon, who impersonated Temperance or Self-Government, was the companion of Prudence, and he alludes several times to Brigadore. His fame, as most scholars will remember, rests in a great measure upon his destruction of the enchantress, Acrasia, in the bower called the Bower of Bliss, which was situated in the Wandering Island.
The name Acrasia means self-indulgence, and this witch was particularly dreaded because of her partiality for transforming her lovers into monstrous shapes and then keeping them captive.
The story of Sir Guyon's stealthy approach while Acrasia lay unsuspectingly in her bower, and of the way in which he succeeded in throwing a net over her, subsequently in binding her firmly in chains of adamant, then in breaking down “her accursed bower” and burning it to ashes, is too well known to need description here, and of course it has no direct bearing upon Brigadore.
So far as we can judge, the horses of Anatolia and Syria must have been well known in Europe by about the middle of the sixteenth century, though one or two writers aver that they did not come over until later.
An artist who died about the year 1603, and whose name was Stradamus, produced, not long before his death, a series of drawings, and a set of these was subsequently issued under the title, “Equile Johannis Ducis Austriaci,” which means, “The Stable of Don John of Austria.”
It is interesting to note in this connection that practically all the horses and mares imported between the year 1660 and the year 1685 came from Smyrna, though the renowned Darley Arabian and several more came from Aleppo.